17 PDF - Ronald R. Hatch, Addressing gravitational anomalies

Addressing gravitational anomalies

Five gravitational anomalies are addressed in this article. Four have been described by Anderson and Nieto [J. D. Anderson and M. M. Nieto, Proc. IAU Symposium No. 261, arXiv:0907.2469v2 (2009)]. The fifth was described by Beutler [G. Beutler, Keynote address. In VIth Hotine–Marussi Symposium on Theoretical and Computational Geodesy: IAG Symposium, Wuhan, China, edited by P. Xu., J. Liu, and A. Dermanis (Springer, New York, 2006), slides 30–36]. It is shown that all of these anomalies have potential explanations. The explanations are themselves dependent upon only two physical models. Specifically, (1) the anomalous increase in the astronomical unit and, (2) the Pioneer anomalous acceleration can be related to the failure to apply gravitational scaling to the units of length, time, and mass as a function of the gravitational potential. The next three anomalies [i.e., (3) the simple failure of a low-orbit polar satellite to determine the gravitational harmonics of the Earth accurately, (4) the anomalous velocity increase in Earth flybys, and (5) the secular increase of the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit] are related to a model that shows that the Earth should be slightly flattened by its absolute velocity (assumed to be defined by the cosmic background radiation), which in turn results in a component of gravitational potential that remains static in inertial space even as the Earth turns.